


Point Of No Return

by SpangleBangle



Series: Thominho Week 2015 [6]
Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Altered Reality, Altered States, Canon - Movie, Canon-Typical Violence, Day 6 - Songs & Lyrics, Drug-Induced Hallucinations, Drugs, Established Relationship, M/M, Needles, Post-Scorch Trials Film, The Scorch Trials Spoilers, Thominho Week, Thominho Week 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-27 21:02:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5063995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpangleBangle/pseuds/SpangleBangle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My fill for Day 6 (Songs & Lyrics) for Thominho Week 2015. I'm using the lyrics below from the song Point Of No Return by Starset, though the entire song is used in theme. Tbh the whole Transmissions album is very TMR in theme. Set after the Scorch Trials film (spoilers) in movie-canon only. Featuring a couple of my theories about what happens to the kids left behind. </p>
<p>“There's a memory of how we used to be / That I can see through the flames / I am hypnotized as I fantasize / Forgetting lies and pain / But I can't go back / The ashes call my name”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Point Of No Return

Point Of No Return by Starset [(x)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NTfbLtXTlw) [epilepsy warning for the video, audio only but glitchy-effect visual screen]

* * *

 

Minho rounded the last turn and drove his exhausted legs through the Door into the Glade again, just seconds before the almighty grinding and crunching rock and metal sounds announced the fall of enforced evening. He let his pace slow and smiled as he looked around his home, full of bustling boys at their work. A few waved to him in the slowly fading light as he jogged towards the Map Room with the other Runners. He smiled and waved back, feeling a deep contentment with his role and place in his world, like the comforting burn of his muscles after a hard day’s work.

He closed the Map Room door behind them all and sank gratefully into a chair as he drew out the day’s pattern. For just a second he hesitated, pencil resting on the paper. Something felt… odd. Something to do with the maps. Like there was something he was forgetting. He frowned, but after a brief moment the feeling, and all awareness of it, faded and he set to sketching.

When they were all done and the day’s maps were put away, he joined Alby and Newt outside Homestead with a plate of Frypan’s delicious bacon, potatoes and greens. They sat quietly together, watching starless night fall on the Glade and listening to the other boys moving around and eating.

“Good day out there?” Newt asked eventually.

“Same as usual,” Minho shrugged. “You?”

“Alright,” Newt replied, reaching down to rub his ankle reflexively. “I’ve been helpin’ Alby today.”

“Yeah?” Minho looked to Alby, who was laying back on the grass and staring blankly up at the sky.

Alby met his eyes briefly. “Nothin’ special. Looking over supplies, drawin’ up a list for the next supply day.”

“For the Box?”

“What else, slinthead?” Alby sighed.

Minho frowned, feeling a vague pressure behind his eyes. When he spoke, his voice slipped out without any conscious thought.

“Where’s Thomas?”

_What?_ He thought. _Who the hell is Thomas?_

“Who the hell is Thomas?” Newt and Alby said in unison, identical in intonation to his own thought.

“I don’t know,” Minho muttered, rubbing his forehead as the pressure mounted. He closed his eyes. His lips moved without his awareness again. “But he should be here. Somethin’ isn’t right.”

Immediately after the words left his lips, a sharp spike of pain lanced through his head. “Shuck!”

A few seconds after it faded, he blinked at his friends, the last minute or so completely gone from his memory. He sat with his friends, watching starless night fall on the Glade and listening to the other boys moving around and eating.

“Good day out there?” Newt asked eventually.

“Same as usual,” Minho shrugged. “You?”

“Alright,” Newt replied, reaching down to rub his ankle reflexively. “I’ve been helpin’ Alby today.”

-x-

That night, he dreamed of voices. They were odd, like he was hearing them underwater, or through a thick door.

_“He’s been fighting it, Doctor.”_

_“That’s to be expected. Just increase the dose, he won’t have the ability to question it then.”_

_“But, Doctor. If we increase it much more, it’ll contaminate the product.”_

_“If he wakes up there’ll be no product to collect. Just increase the dose, nurse. We can refine the product after collection more easily than replacing the vessels.”_

_“Vessels? They’re children, Doctor.”_

_“They’re Munies. Now do your job, or I’ll have you written up.”_

_“Yes, Doctor.”_

A warm bliss filled him and he dreamed no more. When he woke, it was as if the dream had never happened at all.

-x-

Minho squinted up at the sky, trying to find the sun. It was his day off from Running, and he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a day off. How long had it been, anyway? Must be coming up for four years now.

_And we still haven’t found a way out?_ He asked himself, temples suddenly hurting. _And what about the Box?_ He shook off the thought, dismissing it as the oddity it was. There was nothing wrong with the Box. It brought supplies up each week like normal.

Maybe he should check anyway.

He walked over to the hatch and planted his hands on his hips as he looked at it. There was this nagging feeling, like there was something vitally important he had to do… he walked around the edges of the Box, then crouched down and ran his fingers over it. It wasn’t rusty, the chains were well-oiled. It had brought up more flour and sugar and salt just yesterday. There was nothing wrong with it, or out of the ordinary. So why this feeling? He rubbed his forehead, confused.

“What’re you doin’?”

Minho jumped, then smiled up at Alby. “Not much. Just lookin’, I guess. Got this feeling there’s something wrong with the Box, is all.”

“It’s fine.”

“I know. Everythin’ was fine yesterday, right? Just the normal supplies? Nothing else?”

Alby frowned, looking annoyed. “What else would come up? It only ever brings food, moron.”

Minho looked at him in confusion as the pain in his head began to wrench tighter. For a split second, Alby _changed_. Between blinks, blood spurted over his clothes, his face distorted into an agonised silent scream, and blades burst through his skin. Minho rubbed his eyes, and the gruesome image faded.

“You okay, Minho? You look spooked, man.”

Black bars and spots crossed his vision, but he looked up again at Alby. Gritting his teeth through the pain, he watched as his old friend changed between the whole, grumpy young man he knew and an avatar of death and pain in the spaces behind his eyelids in each blink. His head pounded with each heartbeat like a hammer and anvil, but even as the agony increased, so hardened his conviction that there was               

_something_

 

_not_

 

_r i g h t_

 

He squinted down at the Box again, and in the midst of the pain and uncertainty, there was a single quiet truth. _The Box should bring up people too._

He latched onto it, feeling his hands shake as he forced himself to follow the logic. If he had been in the Glade for four years… he looked around, doing a rough headcount.

_There should be more boys than this._

“Minho?” Alby’s voice was distorted, like a badly-tuned radio as he frowned down at Minho. Blood dripped on the grass between them and Minho stared at it, heart racing and head about to explode. There were three names, just beyond reach, he could almost feel them…

“Chuck,” he panted, watching Alby’s blood pool blackly on the grass. “Teresa. And…” He hit the ground with the flat of his palm, then surged down and headbutted the hard ground with a cry of pain. But with the shock of impact, floated free a name. And a face.

A new greenie, asking too many questions. A girl coming up the next day. _Everything is going to change._ Taking Alby to the Griever’s corpse. Running, knowing they wouldn’t make it through the Doors. Thomas, shuckfaced Thomas, running through to help. The night in the Maze. The Doors staying open. Grievers. Fire. Escape. Chuck and Gally bleeding on the floor. Running, the helicopter. Rescue. Clean beds and hot showers. _It’s WCKD! It’s always been WCKD! We never escaped!_ Running with Thomas. _I don’t wanna end up like those kids back there._ Sand, and Cranks. The Scorch. Stealing moments of safety. The Right Arm camp. Sneaking away with Thomas. Hands, lips, and hot skin, finally, at long last, laughing with each other’s breath, tasting each other and needing to feel each other close and honest. Safe now. Happy now. No more running, no more fighting. Bergs, gunfire. So much blood. _Do it, Thomas. We’re ready._ Then pain, so much pain, hands hauling him away, with Thomas’ voice echoing off the rocks as he faded from consciousness, screams of agony and revenge and heartbreak…

It all poured through his head like a flash flood, ears ringing and voice raw from yelling the pain in his head. Alby kept bleeding, mute and motionless.

“You’re dead,” Minho sobbed, looking up at the frozen memory of his friend, bleeding and wounded from the Grievers. “And this isn’t real. None of this is real.”

Abruptly, the world went black. He floated in confused darkness for time out of mind, distressed and suffocating in panic, until voices drifted closer.

_“Wake him up right now! Right now! Or I swear to God I’ll shoot!”_

Thomas?

” _I can’t do that!”_ A panicked woman, sounding nearer. _“It takes time for the full process, and he’s been fighting the serum already, if I just pull out the needle who knows what it could do to his brain!”_

_“Do it. Or I_ will _shoot you.”_ Definitely Thomas. Minho tried to move towards his voice. Sudden pain in his neck, then light started rippling across his vision as the voices became clearer. “ _Now take all that out of him.”_

_“They’re just IVs, to keep him alive—”_

A ratcheting sound, like the safety on a large gun being slid off. _“I know what you’re ‘harvesting’. Take all those shucking needles out of him.”_

_“Tommy, we don’t have time—”_

_“Go get the others, Newt!”_ Thomas again, yelling. His voice cracked a little and Minho fought through the fog, trying to get to him. “I’ll take care of Minho, just get the others.”

“Ten minutes until Jorge’s Berg leaves,” Newt called, his voice retreating with the sound of running boots.

More darts of pain along his arms, back, legs and stomach. With each sharp sting, the lights became brighter and clearer until his eyes could focus, and he blinked them through the ache of disused muscles. The first thing he saw was Thomas – taller, leaner, cheeks more hollow and eyes sunken. His chin and cheeks were stubbled and splashes of blood and dirt streaked his skin and ragged clothes. His hair was longer than Minho had ever seen it, scraped roughly back into a tail. He carried a large gun with the confidence of experience, aimed at the young nurse busily removing needles from Minho, and his shoulders and arms seemed broader and stronger. But it was definitely Thomas. He glanced over and saw Minho was awake, meeting his gaze. Thomas’ brown eyes widened and for a moment filled with tears.

“Minho,” he breathed. “I’m so sorry. I’m gonna get you outta here, don’t worry. We’re leaving this place.”

Minho wanted to smile, make a smart comment or maybe just say how happy he was to see Thomas again, but he could barely move his eyes, and when he tried to speak all that came out was a dry groan. So he kept looking into Thomas’ eyes instead, drinking him in and reassuring himself that this was real, they’d escaped, the Glade he’d been living in had been a fiction. Thomas smiled at him like he’d forgotten how to do it, cheeks and eyes creasing up and erasing the hard-bitten mercenary look he was sporting. Minho managed to smile back, just a little, as the drugs they’d been pumping into him started to fade.

The nurse unstrapped him from the hanging harness and he dropped into the wheelchair placed beneath with a groan of pain, limbs limp and useless from atrophy.

“We only wanted to make a cure,” the nurse sobbed as Thomas came closer with his gun, hands shaking above her head. “It was the only way to get more of the enzyme, please don’t kill me, please don’t, please!”

Thomas didn’t reply, simply kept the gun trained on her with a quietly furious look on his face. She turned to Minho, grabbing his arms and looking desperately into his face. “And we didn’t hurt you! We took care of you. Wasn’t it nice to be back there, back home with your friends? No pain, no Scorch, no Flare, no violence. I was monitoring your brainwaves, you were happy again, Minho! You were so happy to be back there. Don’t leave. Stay here, let us collect more of the enzyme, do more tests, find a cure. And all you have to do is be happy, with your friends, back in the Glade! Don’t you want that?”

Minho could feel Thomas waiting for his response too, and managed to move his mouth enough to slur out a couple of words, sounding drunk and hazy. “Nice. But not real. I’ll take – crappy reality – over daydreams.”

The nurse looked shocked, then smiled sadly. “The Leader, alright.”

“That’s enough,” Thomas said, then lunged forward and slammed the side of the gun into her temple with military, practised effort. Her eyes fluttered, then she fell to the floor unconscious. Thomas quickly put the safety back on, then slung the gun around his shoulders and knelt by the wheelchair. Minho smiled weakly down at him as Thomas cupped his cheek and gripped his hand.

“It’s been just over a year since they got you,” Thomas said, eyes welling up again. “I’m sorry it took so long to find you. I’ve missed you so much.”

“Remembering you,” Minho forced out through his sandpapery throat and unresponsive lips, “Woke me up. Miss you.”

Thomas gave another smile and, as tears fell from his eyes, leaned up and pressed his mouth to Minho’s, kissing him desperately and needily, even if Minho could only vaguely respond. He pulled back after a minute and Minho smiled at him, wanting to hold him close and kiss him until they couldn’t breathe, but his body was heavy and aching from a year of stillness.

“C’mon,” Thomas said, voice rough with emotion as he wiped his cheeks, then secured straps around Minho’s body. “I’m gettin’ you outta here, for good this time.”


End file.
